Army Instructed to Provide Information About Forced Disappearances in Mexico Agencia EFE
go to original August 7, 2015

Interviews from Mexico - Forced Disappearances (teleSUR English)

Mexico's transparency body has instructed the Defense Secretariat to gather up and provide statistical information on forced disappearances between 1960 and February 2015.

A private citizen had asked the secretariat for any available records on incidents investigated by military prosecutors, the number of sentences handed down, the number and gender of aggrieved parties or victims per incident, the number of individuals sentenced per case and the Mexican state where the incidents in each investigation occurred.

The secretariat told the petitioner it did not have that information because those incidents fell under common or federal jurisdiction, but the Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data, or INAI, said that department's response was insufficient.

The INAI said the secretariat had forwarded the request to military prosecutors "and not to other relevant administrative units that had already provided information similar to what was being requested in this case."

It therefore instructed the secretariat on Thursday to conduct a new search that encompasses all relevant administrative units and deliver the requested information to the petitioner.

The information request encompasses a period that includes the so-called "dirty war" of the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, when security forces detained and "disappeared" political opponents, peasant leaders and leftist guerrillas.

Read the rest at La Prensa

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